Sacred Site
by Reona
Summary: Someone makes a last visit to a sacred site on the L2 colony before heading off to war.


_Title: Sacred Site  
Author: Reona  
Email: reona32@aol.com  
Website:   
Fandom: Gundam Wing  
Rating: G  
Summary: Someone makes a last visit to a sacred site on the L2 colony before heading off to war.  
Disclaimer: I don't own GW.  
Warning: Angst  
Authors Note: Although I haven't written in the Gundam Wing fandom for a long time, this just begged to be written._   
  
  
  
The artificial light was beginning to fade, the space colony's computerized support systems rotating toward its 'night-time' operations. Soon any warmth would be leached through the thick metal that protected the fragile humans from the black void, overcome by the unnatural coldness of empty space. The shadows began to deepen and grow, reaching out long fingers to cover more ground. The single flame that burned upon the rock slab brightened in the dark, two violet eyes watching the candle unwaveringly. Around the lone boy, rubble jutted into the air and large sections of stone were piled haphazardly upon each other. It looked as if a bomb had gone off and leveled a building.   
  
The boy didn't move as an air current from the colony's oxygen vents made the candle flicker for a moment. He knew what was around him, could touch each piece of rubble and picture where it had been placed when the building had been whole. He knew the stones he had walked upon when going to the Alter and he could point out the slabs of rock that had made up the large dormitory where the orphans had once slept, where he had once slept. He even knew the precise place where the tall cross had fallen from the pinnacle of the building, laying amid the wreckage covered in a white sheet several yards to his left. Here and there among the stones were pieces of wood, long pews that had been crushed when the roof fell in and the splintered planks of the Alter table and Rood screen. A few metal pipes from the building's pluming and wiring would occasionally thrust into the air like a twisted limb.   
  
The ruins of a church. The boy reached up to his throat and fisted the gold cross that hung there. He could remember when laugher had rung among the stones instead of the eerie silence. There had been a time when the church had stood tall and people had crowded into its Nave every Sunday. When a strong voice had preached love and peace with conviction and faith in a supreme being. That time when he himself had been young and naive and somewhat innocent and had believed that voice. When he had had faith in that supreme being as well. He still had faith in a supreme being, just not the same one. Death ruled here, not that distant and distasteful God.   
  
The boy dropped the cross as if it burnt him and lowered his head, long chestnut bangs covering his watery eyes. "I'm sorry," he muttered into the dark. He knew not to whom he was apologizing to. Maybe to the priest; maybe to God. He didn't care, just as long as someone heard him up there.   
  
However, the stones were not smooth as they had been in his memory. Over the years, the boy had not been the only one to return to the broken church. He suspected a few of the orphans that had been adopted even returned along with the masses of homeless young children and teens that prowled the alleys and streets of the colony. They had taken rocks and scratched things into the stones. Most were simply crosses and other symbols but the more literate left messages and prayers. The boy knew not how many times 'God bless us' and 'God protect us' had been etched into the rocks. A few messages had been written to 'Shinigami' and a number of passages speaking to 'Maxwell's Demon'. The boy, the self-named Duo Maxwell, smiled. Over the years since the massacre more messages had addressed him as Shinigami than the older nickname.   
  
Handprints littered the surfaces, people dipping their hands into the mud and then pressing their palms to the stones. Sometimes colored handprints appeared when people had obtained some paint. Although, Duo knew that some of the red handprints were not made with colored paint. Flowers, in various stages of death and stolen from the gardens of the more wealthy inhabitants of L2 and the occasional street vender, were placed around the area. The waxy stubs of candles, just like the one he was burning, stuck to the surfaces of the stones. Someone, he knew not who, had gotten a newspaper and had ripped out the article about the Maxwell Church Massacre and left it in the rubble, trapped under a small rock so that it wouldn't blow away. Duo had gotten his own copy many years ago, carefully maintaining the clipping for the ancient picture of the church, whole and standing, it had. Occasionally, other pictures showed up trapped under a rock. Adopted orphans had often taken a picture with them when they left Maxwell Church, Sister Helen making sure that each child that came through the orphanage had a photo of the group to remember them. Those adopted children had returned, wedging copies of those pictures into the rubble and Duo had in turn made copies of those copies, returning one of them to the debris. He cherished those photos as much as he cherished Father Maxwell's gold cross.   
  
The old church site was something of a sacred place for the orphans of L2 and a type of 'thief's honor' held power over the area. Anything that was left at the church was to be left there. Thus, things that were of value were left untouched. A piece of broken stain glass window with a dove on it gleamed near by. An apple and a length of broken gold chain lay next to each other on another stone slab. Some unlucky man had had his wallet lifted by some shadow's sticky fingers and now the leather item and all its contents sat untouched. A woman's purse had suffered the same fate. The ruins of the church now served a different propose. This was an Alter for the forgotten, the desperate, and the miserable. Prayers and sacrifices were placed here for any god that would listen, even if Death was the one who answered. For some, Death was just as merciful as any other god.   
  
The candle flickered again and Duo's eyes snapped back to the flame, judging that the candle would last just another fifteen minutes. Good, he had a spaceship to sneak onto. The inhabitants of L2 had begun to whisper about war again, war with the Earth Alliance. Duo's instincts itched, those same instincts that had kept him alive for over fourteen years. They made his feet want to run, not away but toward the prospect of war. Duo wondered briefly if he had gone insane in some tiny part of his mind. Who would think that the war orphan would be seeking to take part in another war? When the church had stood and he had been happy, Duo could remember that he had believed in Father Maxwell's ideal; had believed that true peace could be achieved through nonviolence. The braided boy wondered if anyone still believed that. He didn't. Death and the gun was all he believed anymore.   
  
Duo reached up and touched the gold cross around his neck as the candle burned low, flickered, and died. The dark rushed in to claim the area and Duo smiled in the artificial night. "Forgive me, for I am about to sin…" he whispered. Shinigami stood among the rubble of the old church and hosted a pack from the ground. Like a shadow himself, he left and headed for the L2 spaceport. 

Back


End file.
